Open houses, or Closed Doors??
September 23rd, 2008
Photo Courtesy of TheTruthAbout…
When selling your home, do open houses really work. Many sellers feel that they need to have an open house every weekend until their place is sold. Although this seems reasonable, given some thought it really does not make a lot of sense.
First of all, people who are interested in your home will surely take the time to make an appointment to view it, in today’s web based world there is no shortage of information and buyers are better than most at finding it, so any interested buyer will surely know your home is on the market. This is of course assuming that your realtor is doing their job, or at least the minimum of putting your home on MLS.
Second, Open houses take a lot of time, while your house is is open you probably feel like your agent is working hard for you, but what if they are doing an open for another client, tied up for 3 hours on a busy weekend, prime property viewing time. You probably would not be so happy that they cannot show your property because they are too busy. Simply put, it is not an effective use of time in many cases, wouldn’t it be better to have an agent who can dedicate time to showing properties to interested parties at the parties convenience, rather than working around a schedule that has large time blocks taken up showing properties to anyone that walks off the street, interested or not.
Thirdly, this applies more to Condos than anything. Would you normally invite all the residents in your building over to your unit to take a look? My guess is probably not. When you hold your home open, often the largest group of people that come to view it are your neighbors in the building, they just want to get a look at your unit out of curiosity. Is this an effective tool when trying to sell your home?
One last point, SECURITY, do you really want anyone to be able to come into your home and see what you have, how you live etc. Wouldn’t it be better to have them come in when they have been qualified by an agent?
Of course there are times where open houses can work, and I am not saying that they are never a good toll, but in a general sense, I think there are much more effective ways to sell a home.
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